PAUL LAWRENCE
“UK historic rallying faces a tough call”
In my view, we are at a tipping point for historic stage rallying in the UK. Most signs for 2019 are positive: the running order debacle has been put to bed and the early support for the Roger Albert Clark Rally is a massive thumbs’ up for this branch of the sport. But now the people steering UK historic rallying have a key decision to make. What to do about four-wheel-drive turbo cars?
FIA Category 4B opens historic rallying up to cars built before the end of 1990 and that means four-wheel-drive turbo cars like the Prodrive-developed Group A Subaru Legacy, Lancia Delta Integrale and Toyota Celica GT4 can compete in historic classes.
Already, the BTRDA has opened its Historic Cup to these cars but other historic series, notably the British Historic Rally Championship, are sticking with a twowheel-drive rule, for now, at least.
In MN last month, Andrew Fenwick talked about plans to field as many as four Legacies in the BTRDA Historic Cup and his comments should have sent a chill through the two-wheel-drive ranks. The Fia-permitted 38mm restrictor will allow Legacies to turn out 350bhp (some pundits reckon that could be nearer to 400bhp) and Fenwick claims an advantage of up to 50 seconds per stage based on experience in Belgium. He admits that he can’t see a Ford Escort touching a Legacy.
Even at 350bhp, the Legacy has a similar power advantage over a top-spec Escort Mk2 as that same Escort has over a Lotus Cortina: up to 100bhp. Add in four-wheel drive, and even an averagely-driven Legacy will blow the best Mk2 Escorts into the weeds. I reckon a well-driven Legacy will worry the R5s at the front of the BTRDA field.
I am not against these cars, but I am against them competing directly against the current historics. At a stroke, the historic fraternity risks alienating 70 per cent of its customers for the sake of perhaps four or five rocketships. Let them run in their own division and give it a suitable name, but don’t add them to the historic field. Recent history in Belgium shows the damage that can be done to historic entries by one quick 4WD.
The competitor pool in historic rallying is getting older and some will stop rallying in the foreseeable future. We need to encourage younger drivers into historics and surely, now that the running order is sorted, we should be pushing more affordable and accessible cars: Peugeot 205s and 309s, Vauxhall Novas and Astras and Toyota Corollas for instance.
In historic racing terms, allowing 4WD turbo cars to join the historic field is akin to allowing 1600cc Formula 2 cars to race with Formula Juniors. Such a move would be considered utter folly and would do untold harm to the world’s biggest historic racing category. So why do it in rallying?